Car cinema

The cinema is a parking area with organized entrances and exits and an installed large screen. Sound is transmitted using speakers installed around parking spaces or a low-power radio station in the standard FM band for listening to viewers on the car radio. Due to the nature of the cinema screening in the open air, the work of such cinemas is seasonal in nature, and all screenings begin after sunset . To protect the screen from extraneous illumination, it is sometimes surrounded by opaque light shields on the sides and top ^[1] .

Side sources of income - the sale of snacks and drinks, in the form of self-service machines, stalls and merchants with mobile carts.

The world's first car cinema was opened on June 6, 1933 in the courtyard of his own home by Richard Hollingshead. The site, designed for 400 cars, appeared in the American city of Camden, New Jersey ^[2] . The pay-per-view fee consisted of two parts: viewers paid 25 cents for entry and another 25 for parking. True, in the back rows it was hard to hear anything - then speakers were placed near the screen.

The peak of the popularity of car cinemas came in the late 50s, by which time there were about 5,000.

The largest cinema in the history of American drive-ins accommodated 2,500 machines and 1,200 seats in seating.

According to 2013 data, 389 car cinemas functioned in the United States, which amounted to 1.5% of the total. Most of them are in the states of the West Coast .

• Sim. R. Barbanel, Sol. R. Barbanel, I.K. Kachurin, N.M. Korolev, A.V. Solomonik, M.V. Tsivkin. Chapter IX. Daytime cinema // Film projection technique / S. M. Provornov. - 2nd ed .. - M.,: "Art", 1966. - S. 120-124. - 636 p. Archived on November 13, 2014. Archived November 13, 2014 on Wayback Machine

• N.A. Mayorov. The very first in the history of the development of world cinema (rus.) // “World of Cinema Technique”: magazine. - 2014. - No. 1 (31) . - S. 38-44 . - ISSN 1991-3400 .